my big tree is amputated

There’s a sort of early learning that happens when you start to name and categorize things, like realizing that pigeons and storks are both birds. It’s funny when it happens to you as an adult though. Over the past few days I’ve realized that the kind of person I call an “old soul” is actually two groups of people. I can’t think of a name for the second group, please feel free to help me out on that one.

To use a pop culture reference, she has a Drew Barrymore mouth. Which I suppose is good trouble based on a whole other set of connections. That sort of twisty talk through a half-smile. My friend Stef does it too, so does my Aunt Kate. Kate was my mom’s best friend when I was little. I visited her at her horse farm last summer in rural Alberta. My childhood was sitting in her kitchen with a cup of milk, on furniture made of long blonde half-logs. She chain smoked, always exhaling through the side of her mouth, which was how she spoke too. It was as though she was always telling me a secret, but I’m starting to think it was more that she just knew one. I think they all do, and so do I which makes me wonder if I do it too. I’ve never watched myself talk though.

The old soul seems rich in something they brought into this life. My friend Nancy is a good example, this wisdom that helps them glide courageously through what life throws their way. The second group seems old at first, until you feel a certain static in the air around them, like they’re speeding through life, collecting several lifetimes before you finish one. I’m in awe of their self awareness that seems to have started at an early age, not without pain, not without hiding under the dining room table and sipping booze in grade 5. Speedy Souls? Sigh. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her Drew Barrymore mouth.